Campaigns & Issues

It has been three years since the momentous victory of the marriage equality referendum in the South of Ireland, and four years since The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was passed in England and Wales. Yet Northern Ireland is still waiting

Young and precarious workers across Britain and Ireland are standing up and saying, ‘enough is enough’. Small but successful campaigns, such as the McStrike and the #BetterThanZero initiative, have rebuilt confidence and have proved that, by joining a union and actively organising, we can win. Northern Ireland has not been left behind in this international rise in trade union consciousness. Workers here too, are organising. Following a successful launch of the Unite Hospitality NI campaign, young people from a wide range of workplaces are getting together and planning how they are going to fight for a better life and a better future.

We have to maintain and increase the pressure on Westminster and our local politicians to guarantee real abortion access in Northern Ireland. This cannot wait for the sectarian parties to resolve their disagreements and catch up with ordinary people in the 21st century. We demand free, safe, legal abortion, here and now!

After three days of positive debate and discussion and with firm foundations laid for the year ahead, Conference ended with a rendition of Pete Seeger’s rousing union song ‘Solidarity Forever’. Delegates standing with fists held high understood this could not have been more significant.

The first Trans Pride in Belfast was held on Saturday 2nd June, reflecting the need for transgender, non-binary and intersex (“trans+”) rights. While the spectrum of sexuality is for the most part something that is becoming more accepted and understood, gender is a whole other story. Awareness and advancement of the struggles of trans+ people is something that is growing, but ultimately this progress can only go so far, as the system in which it is taking place is not truly compatible with what is really needed.

The NHS was created by the working-class movement and has always been defended by the working class. The only genuine way to celebrate its 70th birthday is to defend every service and roll back privatisation in a new mass movement for the best health care available in the 21stcentury.

Pro-choice activists and trade unionists must organise for the biggest possible mobilisation of people on the streets ahead of any vote on decriminalisation. We must seek solidarity from the labour movement in Britain. Politicians should be left in no doubt that, if our rights continue to be denied, they will face a campaign of civil disobedience that will make the law unworkable. The Socialist Party supports full decriminalisation of abortion but we must go further to ensure abortions are free, safe, legal and accessible here in Northern Ireland on the NHS.

25th May was a momentous and historic day – two thirds of voters in the South voted to repeal the anti-choice eighth amendment from the constitution, demanding the right of women and pregnant people to access abortion services. Unsurprisingly, it was women, young and LGBT+ people and working-class communities that were to the fore in this revolt. The result was a body blow to the Catholic Church’s domination of Irish society which, in living memory, led to such horrors as the imprisonment of women in Magdalene laundries and state-sanctioned abduction of children from unmarried mothers.